Succubus Summoning 211

Verdé was waiting for Phil and Nÿte as they reached the top of the steps. The succubus sat in an armchair as if posing for a seedy fashion photographer. Her diaphanous green robes were arranged artfully around her.

"I see you've taken care of one of the intruders," she said, noticing the blood smeared all over Phil.

Phil's expression was downcast. He felt as terrible as he looked.

"That wasn't the plan," Phil said. "We were trying to rescue him."

Verdé arched a finely pencilled eyebrow. "Why would you do that?" she asked.

"They're his fellow students from that ridiculous college," Nÿte said. "He seems to think they're his friends."

Verdé put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I didn't know."

Phil grimaced. "I take it that means the one in the forest is beyond rescue."

Verdé nodded her head sadly. "He threw a fireball at me, so I led him through a field of puff boobs. He fell on one."

Phil guessed that meant 'beyond rescue'. Souls didn't escape once Verdé's plants caught them.

"What about yours?" Verdé asked. "I'm guessing from the blood you failed to rescue them."

"He slapped me," Nÿte said.

Verdé raise both eyebrows and her eyes widened. "That was . . . foolish," she said as if shocked anyone would even consider carrying out such an action.

"He realised that. At the end."

Verdé got up out of her chair. She looked to be favouring her left side. Nÿte stared at her with piercing black eyes.

"You seem to be healing slower than normal," she stated.

"My energy levels are a little low," Verdé said. "I'll find a nice young man to . . ." she glanced at Phil. "I'll meditate to recover them later."

"Come to my room after," Nÿte said. "We have things to discuss."

Verdé seemed reluctant to meet Nÿte's abyssal-eyed gaze.

What was that about? Phil thought.

"What about the other two students?" he asked.

Nÿte turned to him. "They'll be okay . . . so long as they don't do anything foolish."

* * * *

The succubus before him was blazing with power. Flames flickered all over her body. They looked impressive, but were merely parlour tricks compared to the power Darvill sensed emanating from her. It felt like a tangible force.

Darvill wanted it.

Forget the sex. He wanted the knowledge—the power—she could teach him.

And for a moment, a long one, he was tempted.

Then he noticed the poly-Oc daemon sitting on his shoulder had gone very quiet. Normally it was constantly shifting around as it tried to look at everything. Now it was still . . . expectant.

And then he understood.

Calmly, Darvill carved the

Exhalzangz'gn Flambastinaa

sigil into his palm. Red blood welled up out of the cuts. Darvill knew the flames Rosa was playing with were sentient and came from the Elemental Plane of Consumas Infernum. He placed his bloody palm flat on the ground and banished them as he would any other intruding daemon. The burning torches died down and flickered out. The same happened to the flames dancing all over the succubus's body. His banishment would keep them gone for at least an hour.

"Thanks for your offer," he said, "but I must regretfully decline. I'm not advanced enough to be able to assimilate the knowledge and power you wish to gift me. It would destroy me."

He ran an affectionate hand over the eye stalks of the poly-Oc sitting on his shoulder.

"My poly-Oc here is enough. It might take me a little longer, but I'll learn what I need from my own studies. I can be patient."

"Very well," Rosa said. She didn't seem happy about it, but she moved out of his path.

"Now tell me where you're holding my friend," Darvill ordered.

"Through there, up the stairs and straight down the corridor," she said, pointing to the door in the right wall behind her couch. "You won't like what you find."

He gave the succubus a wide berth as he walked to the exit. She took a little half step towards him as he went by.

"Are you sure you don't want a quick blowjob?" she asked.

There was an awkward pause.

"Um, no thanks," Darvill said. He left the room.

After he left, Rosa cursed loudly and creatively. She summoned up a fireball and set the bed on fire.

"Why did I have to get the smart one," she moaned. "I really wanted a fuck."

* * * *

Phil heard singing—a child's nursery rhyme that featured lots of

ra ra ras

—as they entered Cέrμləa's part of the castle. They found her in a playroom tucked away from the main corridor. The walls were brightly painted and were covered in murals of playful cartoon figures. At first glance it looked cheery. At second glance Phil realised something was off. When he looked more closely he realised the cartoon characters were devouring each other.

Cέrμləa sat cross-legged on the floor. Her arms were up in the air and she swayed her upper body as if dancing to the song she was singing. Sitting across from her was a small cone of brown flesh with a large mouth as its only discernible feature. The fleshy tip bobbed back and forth as if it was dancing along with Cέrμləa.

"Oh hello," Cέrμləa said, noticing Phil. "Mr G dropped by to play with me."

"Mr G?"

Phil was confused. He'd met Mr G. He was a daemon that looked like a French waiter and lived in a weird dimension full of giant worms.

"Isn't that a minor nebrit?"

It looked very similar to the minor nebrit that was always perched on Herbie Higgins' broad shoulder.

"All daemons from the Dominion of Gluttony are Mr G," Nÿte explained. "They're all maws leading to the Grand Belly."

The minor nebrit had no recognisable features other than a big mouth filled with oversized teeth. Despite this, Phil could have sworn the thing was smiling at him in recognition. The teeth gnashed together and it made odd warbling sounds while spraying slobber.

"Mr G says hi," Cέrμləa said.

"Hi," Phil said. "I don't suppose you can help me out. I'm looking for a human warlock. He carries another one of you on his shoulder."

Cέrμləa put a finger to her lips and her forehead creased up in concentration. "I think I did see a warlock wandering around here earlier. A big fellow. Smelt a little funny."

"Yes, that sounds like Herbie. Do you know where he went?"

"Hmm, let me think."

She let out a loud belch. She put a hand to her mouth and flushed in embarrassment.

"Pardon me," she said.

The cone of flesh belched as well. The noise was deeper and far louder than something its size should be capable of making.

"And pardon Mr G," Cέrμləa said.

She put her finger on her lips and once again her forehead was creased in concentration. She shook her head.

"No, sorry," she said.

She gave an apologetic shrug.

The cone of flesh shrugged as well. It was not an easy gesture to pull off without arms and shoulders, but the minor nebrit managed it.

Cέrμləa went back to her strange version of Pat-a-cake with Mr G.

"He's gone," Verdé whispered in his ear.

Phil was already reaching the same conclusion. The minor nebrit looked remarkably similar to Herbie's daemon. So similar, in fact, they were probably one and the same daemon.

Phil looked at the twisted cartoons on the wall and decided he was probably better off not knowing what had happened to Herbie Higgins.

"Cέrμləa?" Verdé interrupted her game. "Are there any other students from Master's college still present in the castle?"

"Alive ones," Nÿte clarified.

Cέrμləa stopped her game. "Bye bye, Mr G." She gave the pile of flesh a little wave.

Then, right before Phil's astonished gaze, the minor nebrit started to eat itself. The jaws worked up and down and it curled up in a ball that grew smaller and smaller as it ate more of itself, until it simply popped out of existence.

Cέrμləa stood up and skipped over to them. She paused and her eyes became unfocused as if she was focusing on images only she could see.

"Yes, one," she said. "But he's about to face Mamǝḵā Bēyˁṯān."

* * * *

Darvill reached the top of the stairs and entered a long passageway. A line of stone arches resembling windows ran along each wall. The arches didn't look out onto anything; the view was obscured by flaps of glossy white material—some kind of rubber. The latex sheets swayed and bulged and initially Darvill thought this must be a corridor exposed to the outside elements, maybe a bridge between two towers. Then he realised the motions were co-ordinated—like lungs drawing breath. As he walked down the corridor he caught movement in the corner of his eye. Ripples ran through the glossy white material. Ripples that resolved into faces and hands. They melted away the moment he turned to look at them directly.

Up ahead the corridor terminated in a strange obstruction. It resembled a giant sphincter or iris, but was made out of the same glossy white rubber rather than any kind of biological material.

Darvill checked his portable soul divination apparatus. It told him Gary was on the other side of that door, if it was a door.

He approached and the door opened up like an iris. Revealed on the other side was a large white chamber. It contained beds, couches and other furniture whose purpose was primarily pleasure. Everything was covered in a layer of glossy white latex. He noticed there was no visible gap between furniture and the floor, as though all the beds and loungers he saw had been extruded from the floor beneath.

At the end of the room a succubus in white sat in a massive, overstuffed chair that resembled a throne in both dimensions and placement. He recognised her. It was the same succubus Gary had been infatuated with. She'd changed. Her long silky hair was pure white and a complex series of horns—like those of an elk—were threaded through it. She no longer resembled a trashy porn star in a fetish nurse outfit. She looked regal . . . powerful.

Darvill saw no one else in the room. He checked his portable soul divination apparatus. It pointed directly at the daemon sitting on the throne.

He wished it hadn't.

"I've come for Gary Dever," Darvill said. "Return him to me."

The succubus in white ignored his demand. She looked at the artefact in his hand. "Is that an Aqui-animus divination apparatus?"

Darvill nodded.

"I'm sorry," the succubus said. "Those have never worked particularly well around me."

Darvill drew his knife and prepared to slice into his arms to activate the most powerful offensive magic he knew. "I don't want a fight," he said. "Give me Dever and we'll both leave without any trouble."

"No, you don't want a fight," the succubus said.

She looked at Darvill standing defiantly before her.

"You need to see something," she said.

She sighed and pushed her breasts and belly outwards. Her latex outfit—if it was an outfit, Darvill suspected it was her skin—rippled as a commotion took place underneath. Tiny hands followed by equally small faces pushed out against the malleable rubber. They pushed out and then subsided, as if the succubus was cycling through them in search of one particular soul. She found it and Darvill recognised Gary's face. Gary pushed out as if trying to force his way through a thick sheet of elastic. His arms and most of his upper body emerged from the succubus's stomach as if an unnatural fission was taking place.

Darvill's excitement faded as he saw more of Gary's body. The shape of the head was wrong—deformed, partially melted. The same was true of his hands. The fingers weren't right—they looked like softened wax. Gary's face broke the surface and Darvill saw there was nothing there. The eyes were blank, dead. There was no light there. No life. No soul. Gary didn't recognise him. The malformed face gibbered nonsensically.

Water welled up in Darvill's eyes.

The daemon saw he understood. She flexed her amorphous body and Gary was pulled back down into her as if caught in a quagmire. The rippling commotions faded away until there was only the succubus, looking radiantly perfect as she sat on her throne.

"You friend is gone," she said. "Even if you had the necessary power to force me to return him to you, all I can give you are his remnants—little more than carrion that would fall apart in your hands."

"Then I came here—risked the lives and souls of my friends—for nothing."

"Not for nothing," the succubus said. "You have grown considerably as a warlock. Calli-Scitu-Oc is very pleased with your progress." She smiled at the poly-Oc perched on Darvill's shoulder.

Darvill's poly-Oc had a name? Darvill thought that was a weakness lesser warlocks indulged in—giving their daemon familiars pet names. Darvill hadn't. It was a poly-Oc, nothing more than a common familiar.

Then he looked across to the poly-Oc sitting on his shoulder, saw the way it looked back at him, and understood.

"It appears I've been operating under an erroneous set of assumptions," he said.

Most of his knowledge, nearly everything he knew, had been obtained from reading books. He saw now that most of it was wrong. A single glance from Calli-Scitu-Oc told him that.

The succubus smiled at him. He could see why they were regarded as creatures of near-irresistible temptation. That temptation emanated from her like a burning spotlight. He was relieved she had chosen not to turn it on him.

"What about the others?"

"They did not possess sufficient strength of character."

The voice came from behind him. Darvill turned and saw a small group of succubi had entered the room. He recognised Rosa and Verdé, and the succubus that looked like a stern dominatrix. There was also a succubus he hadn't seen before—a little girl with horns and spiky blue hair. Despite looking like a child, she had the oldest eyes Darvill had ever seen, older even than both the succubus in black and the succubus in white. In the middle of them, still dressed in his ratty old robes, was Phil Rowling.

* * * *

"If it's any consolation, your bringing them here did not change anything. This was always going to be their fate," Nÿte said to Darvill.

Phil hadn't visited this chamber before. Everything in the room was covered in glossy white latex. When he wasn't looking at it directly, the latex seemed to shift and bulge as if something was trapped on the other side. It reminded him uncomfortably of the souls he'd seen trying to push out through Nurse Honey's nurse outfit.

At least Darvill was still alive. That was a plus.

The other student nodded his head at Nÿte's words. "Can someone show me the way back to Earth?" he asked.

"I'll do it!" Cέrμləa said. She skipped forwards and took Darvill's hand.

"I'm really sorry," Phil said to Darvill as he walked past.

"There's nothing to apologise for," Darvill said. "The choices and decisions were theirs to make."

He gave Phil a friendly fist bump on the shoulder.

"See you back at college."

He left the room with Cέrμləa and the white iris door closed behind them.

"No fair," Rosa said with an unhappy pout. "Why did I have to get the smart one? Now I'm all frustrated."

"A promising prospect," Nurse Honey said. Her horns had disappeared and her hair had returned to its usual blonde colour. "He might develop into a fine warlock."

"Needs to lose some of that arrogance," Nÿte said. "Today will have helped him."

"He could have at least let me give him a blowjob," Rosa complained.

"You look tired," Verdé said to Phil.

"It's been a long day," Phil said.

Since waking up he'd seen one of Nÿte's ghoulish collections; fought a spider daemon; ran around the castle in search of his fellow students; had sex with a succubus covered in the freshly-spilled blood of one of those students. Rest would be good. Therapy might also be needed.

Verdé went behind him and started to gently knead the meat of his shoulders. "You need a little pampering," she said.

Her nose wrinkled.

"And a good clean up," she added.

Rosa's ears pricked up. "Giving our warlock a good pampering, I like that idea. Mmm, my pussy will give you a really nice pampering."

She started to walk towards Phil . . .

. . . and was intercepted by Nÿte. The other succubus put an arm around her waist, squeezed her tight to her, and steered her away towards the exit.

"Mine was a little too young to fully appreciate the talents of a succubus," Nÿte said to Rosa, "so I had some fun with our master instead. I think we should let him have a quiet night to recuperate."

"But . . . but . . ." Rosa said to no avail as Nÿte guided her away.

"Let's get you cleaned up," Verdé said.

She took him down to the opulent bathing area, put him under a hot shower to sluice away the abattoir remnants of Joey Chalk, and then lightly sponged him all over until he felt fresh and clean. Well, clean at least.

"Did they have to die?" he asked Verdé as she walked him back to his room.

"You've all chosen a difficult path to walk," she said. "Those that don't possess the requisite strength and ability will not make it to the end. That's the way it's always been."

That sounded cold to Phil, yet Verdé had said it as though it was perfectly natural. Maybe to daemons it was. Phil didn't think he'd ever get used it and he doubted this would be the last occurrence.

Verdé blew him a tingling kiss and then glided away down the corridor. Phil entered his room. It was in darkness.

Strange. He normally pulled aside the black sheet he used to block out the bright pink sky from the window when he got up at whatever felt like morning.

It had been one of those days. He must have forgotten and there wasn't any opportunity to do it later. He didn't even bother to make any light. He took his stinky robes off and tossed them into the corner. Then he dived backwards onto his bed. This was one of those rare occasions when he was glad the bed was as ludicrously big and soft as it was.

He didn't land on it. Instead he landed on some sticky filaments that were maybe suspended an inch or so above it.

. . . sticky filaments that felt suspiciously like a giant web.

. . . that looked like a giant web.

He heard giggling out in the darkness.

"Look at what's fallen into my little web," L'mactia said.

* * * *

"You don't look very happy," the daemon that looked like a little girl asked as they walked deeper into the castle. She'd given her name as Cέrμləa.

"I led my friends into hell and they all got killed. Aside from that everything is peachy," Darvill said.

"But you're about to leave with your life and soul intact. That's a big achievement for a novice warlock," Cέrμləa said, bright and breezy like the little girl she resembled.

Darvill supposed it was. Then he remembered the others and he wanted to vomit. They were going to form a secret cabal to sweep away the crusty old order. He'd been young and very very stupid.

Cέrμləa led him into a children's playroom. Or at least what he'd first thought was a children's playroom. On closer inspection he realised the toys scattered around the room had more in common with torture devices. Childcare as designed by Clive Barker. Creepy girl, Darvill thought.

There was one item in the room that looked out of place. There was a door that didn't match the rest of the decor. It was plain in comparison to the rest of the room and positioned in a place where you wouldn't expect a door to be. It looked similar to the doors in the dormitory area of Wargsnouts.

"It's through there," Cέrμləa said, pointing to the door.

Darvill opened it and saw Phil's bedroom at Wargsnouts on the other side. He stepped through and was relieved to be back on Earth. His trip to hell had been a chastening experience.

Cέrμləa waved at him from the other side of the door.

"I have to stay here," she said. "I'm not allowed to enter your world. Yet."

Darvill looked back at the little girl with centuries-old eyes. Did Rowling even know what he'd summoned?

He closed the door behind him.

"Fresh start," he said to Calli-Scitu-Oc.